A shore-based captain manoeuvres the Svitzer tug from inside a remote operating centre 10
REMOTE OPERATION TO AUTONOMOUS SHIPPING
Rolls-Royce and Svitzer’s remote-controlled tug heralds the beginning of the age of autonomous shipping Jennifer Johnson reports
In February 2017, the captain of a 28m-long tug called Svitzer Hermod berthed his vessel alongside a quay in Copenhagen Harbour before undocking, turning around, and piloting it a short distance across the water. To an onshore observer, the tug would have appeared to be carrying out perfectly normal harbour manoeuvres — but its captain wasn’t steering the vessel from the bridge. In fact, he wasn’t aboard Svitzer Hermod at all. The tug’s short voyage marked what project
partners Rolls-Royce and Svitzer claim was the world’s first successful demonstration of a remotely-operated commercial vessel. Its captain was a few hundred metres away in an anonymous quayside building, seated inside what is known as the Rolls-Royce Remote Operating Centre (ROC). Equipped with a range of remote-sensing equipment, the vessel transmitted data and images back to the ROC,
where the captain was able to manoeuvre it in real-time. At first glance, the ROC
resembles a traditional wheelhouse and features many of the technologies found on modern vessels, including radar, manual and joystick control, ECDIS, and AIS. But instead of windows to the open ocean, the captain looks out on a 180-degree wall of screens, where onboard cameras produce a 3D moving image of the tug’s surroundings. According to Oskar Levander, senior vice-president of concepts and innovation at Rolls-Royce Marine, the invention of the ROC is the first step in creating a future-proof standard for the remote and autonomous operation of vessels. He envisions captains monitoring
multiple vessels from inside a ROC, and only assuming manual control when taking ships into port or navigating crowded fairways. “More and more ship management will move to the shore side and it will be communicated from ship to shore,” Levander predicts. “It’s
Oskar Levander of Rolls-Royce
about linking up the vessels and providing a kind of awareness of what’s happening on board
— I call it total awareness. Everything that happens on a vessel will be monitored ashore, and eventually controlled from ashore.”
Internet connectivity The project was initiated in early 2016 under conditions of great secrecy. Global towage operator Svitzer had noted the disruptive
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